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John Blanke

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Extract from the 1511 Westminster Tournament Roll almost certainly showing John Blanke, wearing a green turban latticed with yellow.

John Blanke (also rendered Blancke or Blak) (fl. 1501–1511) was a musician of African descent in London from the early Tudor period, who probably came to England as one of the African attendants of Catherine of Aragon in 1501. He is one of the earliest recorded black people in the United Kingdom after the Roman period.[1][2] His name may refer to his skin colour, derived either from the word "black" or possibly from the French word "blanc", meaning white.

Background

Little is known of Blanke's life, but he was paid 8 pence per day by King Henry VII.[3] A surviving document from the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber records a payment of 20 shillings to "John Blanke the Blacke Trumpet" as wages for the month of November 1507, with payments of the same amount continuing monthly through the next year.[4] He successfully petitioned Henry VIII for a wage increase from 8d to 16d.[5]

Sydney Anglo was the first historian to propose that the "Blanke Trumpet" in the 1507 court accounts was the same as the black man depicted twice in the 1511 Westminster Tournament Roll,[6] in a footnote to an article about the Court Festivals of Henry VII.[7] The Westminster Tournament Roll is an illuminated, 60-foot manuscript now held by the College of Arms; it recorded the royal procession to the lavish tournament held on 12 and 13 February 1511 to celebrate the birth of a son, Henry, Duke of Cornwall (died 23 February 1511), to Catherine and Henry VIII on New Year's Day 1511. John Blanke is depicted twice, as one of the six trumpeters on horseback in the royal retinue. All six of the trumpeters wear yellow and grey livery and bear a trumpet decorated with the royal arms; Blanke alone wears a brown and yellow turban, while the others are bare-headed with longish hair. He appears a second time in the roll, wearing a green and gold head covering.

Black trumpeters and drummers were documented in other Renaissance cities, including a trumpeter for the royal ship Barcha in Naples in 1470, a trumpeter recorded as galley slave of Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1555, and black drummers in the court of King James IV in Edinburgh.

Commemoration

British rapper and novelist Akala, based a character in his book The Dark Lady on John Blanke, released in 2021.[8]

In January 2022, a Nubian Jak Community Trust blue plaque was installed in Blanke's honour at King Charles Court, home to Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance's Faculty of Music at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, London.[9]

In May 2022, an exhibition The Tudors: Passion, Power and Politics at the Walker Art Gallery displayed in public for the first time in 20 years two portraits of Blanke on the Westminster Tournament Roll. It was the first time the document was shown outside London.[10]

The John Blanke Project is an art and archive initiative of which Michael Ohajuru is the founder and director.[11] The Project celebrates and is linked to images of Blanke,[12][13] and was featured in a Sky Arts presentation on 11 July 2023, marking the opening of the refurbished National Portrait Gallery, London.[14][15]

References

  1. ^ Olusoga, David (13 August 2017), "Black people have had a presence in our history for centuries. Get over it", The Guardian.
  2. ^ Gregory, Phil, "Black Romans in Britain". The Black Presence in Britain.
  3. ^ National Archives
  4. ^ Kaufmann, Miranda (8 April 2021), "Blanke, John (fl. 1507–1512), royal trumpeter", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
  5. ^ Ohajuru, Michael, "John Blanke, Henry VIII’s Black Trumpeter, Petitions for a Back Dated Pay Increase", the many-headed monster, 27 July 2015.
  6. ^ "Sydney Anglo: The Historian Who Identified John Blanke", The John Blanke Project.
  7. ^ Anglo, Sydney, 'The Court Festivals of Henry VII: A Study Based Upon the Account Books of John Heron, Treasurer of the Chamber', Bulletin of John Rylands Library, 43, 1960–1961.
  8. ^ Akala (2021), The Dark Lady, Hachette UK, ISBN 9781444943245.
  9. ^ "Pioneering 16th Century Musician gets Blue Heritage Plaque". The Phoenix Newspaper. 14 January 2022. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  10. ^ Ferguson, Donna (20 April 2022). "Story of Henry VIII's Black trumpeter to be told at Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 May 2022.
  11. ^ "Michael I. Ohajuru". British Art Network. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
  12. ^ Lohmann, Silke (18 October 2021). "The John Blanke Project". London Art Week. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
  13. ^ "The John Blanke Project: Imagine the Black Tudor Trumpeter | National Portrait Gallery, London (June 2023, permanent collection)". The John Blanke Project. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
  14. ^ "John Blanke Project at the National Portrait Gallery on SkyArts TV (11th July 2023)". The John Blanke Project | Imagine the Black Tudor Trumpeter. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
  15. ^ "The John Blanke Project In National Portrait Gallery Permanent Collection". The John Blanke Project. 21 June 2023. Retrieved 14 July 2023.

Further reading

  • David Bindman, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Karen C. C. Dalton, The Image of the Black in Western Art: pt. 1. From the 'age of discovery' to the age of abolition: artists of the Renaissance and Baroque, Volume 3, Part 1 of The Image of the Black in Western Art, Harvard University Press, 2010, ISBN 0674052617, p. 236
  • Imtiaz H. Habib, Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500–1677: Imprints of the Invisible, Ashgate Publishing, 2008, ISBN 0754656950, p. 39
  • Miranda Kaufmann, "John Blanke, the Trumpeter", in Black Tudors: The Untold Story, Oneworld Publications, 2017, pp. 7–31
  • K. J. P. Lowe, Black Africans In Renaissance Europe, Cambridge University Press, 2005, ISBN 0521815827, p. 39
  • Onyeka Nubia, Blackamoores: Africans in Tudor England, their Presence, Status and Origins, London. Narrative Eye, 2013, ISBN 0953318214
  • Marika Sherwood, "Blacks in Tudor England", History Today, Volume 53, Issue 10
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